Giovanni da Carignano: Fourteenth-Century Cartographic Innovator

Abstract

Giovanni da Carignano’s chart is a testimony to the technical development attained by Genoese cartography at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Carignano’s original chart—which was destroyed during World War II—has not been the subject of specific analysis. This study highlights the innovation introduced by Carignano: a new relationship between image and text. In his work, Carignano included descriptive texts that help readers understand the image or provide historical and political information. Moreover, he used cities’ heraldic shields as a tool to communicate territories’ political dimensions. Thus, Carignano overcame the dichotomy between image and text and proposed a new cartographic model found in many charts drawn during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Finally, in the representation of river hydrography, Carignano utilized a graphic style that will only be used by cartographers toward the end of the fifteenth century.